


She Was Pretty

by skeptique



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Lavender Brown, Body Positivity, F/F, Friends to Lovers, HP Femslash MiniFest, Healing, Post-War, Scars, Trauma, Werewolf Lavender Brown, body image issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:07:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29131548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeptique/pseuds/skeptique
Summary: In the aftermath of the war, Lavender Brown rediscovers herself in a tiny flat above her Diagon Alley tea shop. Parvati helps.
Relationships: Lavender Brown/Parvati Patil
Comments: 16
Kudos: 42
Collections: Plans - Scarves - Letters - Jan-Feb 2021





	She Was Pretty

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from a kdrama, which otherwise has absolutely nothing to do with this fic. Putting on my multishipper hat for Femslash February. 
> 
> All credit to my wonderful betas: [tonftyhw](https://tonftyhw.tumblr.com/) who shaped this into something more readable than when I started and [thistlecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistlecat) who went over this meticulously and made it bloom. Research by [crazybutgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazybutgood) who introduced me to vada pav among other things.

“She was pretty,” someone whispers behind Lavender in Diagon Alley in the early days after the war, after her discharge from hospital. The comment says so much, doesn’t it? Such a tragedy to lose your looks. Lavender Brown was once pretty and now she isn’t. Isn’t that a shame?

Lavender pulls her scarf half over her face, a deep purple and gold embroidered pashmina that Professor Trelawney had gifted her. It hides the scarring on her neck but the longest scar is a diagonal slash from hairline to heartline—across her face, down her neck and arm to her left palm—that can’t be hidden.

Out of the rubble of her school, Lavender had carried the bodies of her classmates. She had survived when she wasn’t supposed to. People around her had lost so much: friends, families, homes, lives. She shouldn’t care if other people don’t like to look at her now.

She cares a little.

Lavender remembers the tang of her own blood on her lips, her body in front of a door to a classroom where a small gaggle of first years were huddled together shivering as Voldemort’s forces had swept the castle. She remembers when Greyback first looked at the door and then at her, eighteen, with her wand shaking in her grip. She would make the same choice every single time.

The first thing her mother offers her when she checks out of St Mungo’s is a glamour. The same way she had offered Lavender her first lipstick at six, a vivid rich burgundy she can still remember. She had felt so grown up as she was taught to apply it with care.

“If you’re not ready to face...” Something in Lavender’s expression must warn her off. Her scars itch and adding the prickling of a glamour seems unwise. She does apply a little gloss for the walk to the public Floos for something to do with her hands while her mother signs off on discharge forms.

Her mother offers her pity mostly, raw and cloying. But there is love there too. She clucks at her the second day Lavender is home after a month spent in hospital. “They didn’t braid your hair tight enough, Lavvy. Come here.”

Mum sits Lavender at her vanity in the master bedroom, with its charmed lights and array of perfume oils. She spends time with detangling potions, fingertips and comb, brushing out the fairy knots that have formed at the crown of her head and the nape of her neck. Mum braids her hair, even though she has arthritis in her hands and has been sending her to Auntie Yasmin to have her hair done since she was eight. She seals the end of each braid with a charm.

Her mum prepares her food for her even though they never ate red meat at home before. Her mother applies the five salves a day to her back and neck and picks up her Wolfsbane Potion from Slug and Jiggers.

“I still want to open the tea shop in Diagon,” Lavender tells her gently.

“Of course, dear,” Mum says. Placating.

“I want to open shortly. I don’t want to wait,” Lavender says more forcefully. Her mother is used to the Lavender before the War, the Lavender who had learned to bring things up delicately, sandwiching a request between flattery. Lavender has lost the knack and finds she doesn’t quite miss it.

“Ask your father about the paperwork with Gringotts. There was a delay. Nell says the goblins are doing repairs to the dome, and they’ve asked the Ministry for money. Just a mess top to bottom.”

That is as good as a yes, and something warm and fond stirred in her blood. She bends and gives her mother a kiss on the temple, the way she had done before, and pretends she didn’t immediately smell the sharpness of tears. They said at St Mungo’s her senses were supposed to dull over time as she adjusted, but they hadn’t yet.

Climbing the stairs of their family home in Manchester, there are photographs of her and her family crowded on the wall, smiling and jostling each other. She touches each one like a talisman, and knocks on the heavy oak door of the study before pushing it open.

Her father won’t look her in the eye. He stares at a spot over her left ear when she speaks to him. She can almost taste the guilt on him, the care, and the hint of fear. It is almost overwhelming to know so definitively what he was feeling. All her childhood he had been strong and silent. Private. Now she can scent out every secret. There is so much strangeness these days that this hardly rates.

“Mumsy said to check on the paperwork with you,” Lavender says.

“It’s chaos. Gringotts, the government, half the shops aren’t even open. It’ll go through. Don’t worry. There’s still...it will still be yours, my love,” Dad says, meeting her eyes briefly. He does love her. She doubted his love before, because of his silences. That’s the way he loves her, by arranging and fixing everything.

“There’s a flat above the shop, correct? I think I would like it.” She tests her new bluntness on him.

Before she and her father had discussed renting the small dusty attic studio to bring in some income to pad out narrow margins. But she had plans now and couldn’t be deterred from them. There was a question there about whether the Ministry would approve her business permit. Whether anyone would want to have tea with a werewolf. This hadn’t been in the business plan they’d made in sixth year when he had told her she should have something of her own.

“It’s very small in that attic. There won’t be anyone for months to do expansions,” her father says thoughtfully.

“I don’t mind,” she says.

“If that’s what you want,” he says. He’s looking at his paperwork once more.

* * *

As soon as Lavender moves above the shop, the letters start arriving in a flurry of owls. She ignores them, letting them pile up on the spindly folding table by the single window, unopened. She doesn't even read the names on the envelopes. Her flat is small and sparsely furnished with the leftovers from the attic of the family home, Cousin Zinnia’s wrought iron bed frame, her childhood book shelf and well worn blankets. The tap whistles and the cooling cupboard’s charm fizzles out periodically. But she saves all the flourishes for the shop.

She spends her time cleaning. The shop had been neglected, closed before the war. Sometimes her hands shake too much for delicate wand movements, so she gets on her hands and knees and scrubs muggle-style with hot water, hard soap and a brush.

Parvati shows up within a week. She had been there at St Mungo's apparently, before Lavender woke up. That's probably why she is able to look at her without flinching. Lavender can't sense anything but overwhelming relief on her. It's a heady sensation. This warmth was what Lavender had expected when she left St Mungo’s for home.

"Hello. You didn't answer my letters, Lav." Steady and straight to the point without sounding like an accusation.

"There have been a lot of letters," Lavender says.

"You didn't answer _my_ letters," Parvati repeats.

"I'm sorry," Lavender finally says after a long pause, a long look at her. It hasn't been more than a few months but they hadn’t gone that long without seeing each other since the summer after first year when Parvati went to visit her relatives in Kolhapur. She drinks in the sight of her, familiar and dear.

"I missed you," Parvati says. "Everyone said I should give you space but I missed you."

They sleep together in the same bed, and they've done this so many times before it should hardly register. But maybe because her body has changed, Lavender knows it's different. The fierce protectiveness as she hears Parvati's breath shush out is something new and beautiful cracking through her ribs.

Parvati goes home once to pack a trunk and comes back.

"Padma is still around. Two of my cousins and their spouses are there with three toddlers. They are not lacking in company. What do they need me for anyway?"

Lavender knows Mr and Mrs Patil well enough she's sure that argument wouldn't have worked. Especially now, right after a war. But Parvati is here anyway.

They fall into one another. Hold each other up. Some of the days get a little better.

Parvati rolls her eyes when Lavender asks her to leave for the full moon, follows her down to the safe room built specially for her transformation and sits and talks to her all night through the bars even when Lavender can’t focus enough to understand. Parvati sings her a song in Marathi. She thinks she’s heard this song before. Lavender’s body aches, but under the lull of Parvati's voice, she lies down and falls asleep in this body that is and is not hers. Lavender likes Parvati. Her wolf likes her.

Sometimes Parvati wakes up from nightmares and can't breathe. She shakes and calls the names of fallen classmates in anguish. She cries so hard, so violently, the bed shifts. The Ministry is still looking for some of the bodies at Hogwarts. Everyone who is missing at this point is presumed dead.

Lavender holds her, strokes her brow and murmurs an endless stream of soothing words in her hair. "It's just us. Just me and you. It always will be. We're okay. We’ll be alright." And, "Remember when we carved Pav and Lav in the Room of Requirement? You remember?" And, "I know. I know. I know, love." It's not the same thing but it makes Lavender feel like she does something for her too.

Not everything is like that.

One day Parvati forgets her towel and just steps out of the shower dripping wet, only her hair draped over her shoulders. Lavender's mouth goes dry and then very, very wet. They have lived together since they were eleven. But incidental nakedness is one thing and it’s quite another to be confronted by Parvati before seven in the morning with her dimples in each buttcheek, the fullness of her thighs in motion, the intimacy of seeing her body hair freshly trimmed.

"Forgot my wand," Parvati says, casually. Lavender hands it to her and keeps her eyes level with Parvati’s deep brown ones. Lavender is trying not to look but also trying not to seem like she's trying not to look. She might snap her own wand from the effort so she slowly turns back to stir their breakfast on the stove top with a circular motion.

"Thanks. Is the cupboard working?" Parvati asks.

Merlin, she was in trouble. Lavender wants to lick one of the drops of water off her body. Parvati looks so _good_. Lavender’s mouth is slightly open, so she licks her lips, closes her mouth and waits for her heart to stop racing.

"Yeah," Lavender manages. She has never been like this before about anyone, and she blames raging werewolf hormones though the moon is a thumbnail sliver in the sky.

The shop does decently once they open. Lavender’s theory is that a cup of tea feels ordinary—that is exactly what people want in these times. Former classmates love the blooming teas in glass teapots. Recent widowers stop for a cup of classic Earl Grey with a hint of vanilla served milky and sweet. Lovers reunite over the masala chai, a blend Lavender tried making again and again until it smelled right to Parvati.

“For fuck’s sake, Mum, you can’t catch lycanthropy by shopping here,” a middle-aged witch declares to her elderly mother as the pair steps in.

“Welcome to Lavender and Mint. How may I help you?” Lavender says, her voice calm and stomach roiling. Parvati is upstairs and so she is alone in the shop.

“A half pound of English breakfast please,” the woman says. Her mother watches Lavender closely as she weighs the tea leaves, and scoops them into a tin. She resists the urge to stick her tongue out at the older woman and uses her wand to carefully add her label. Lavender collects the sickles off the counter and puts in the register, noticing even this younger woman refuses to touch her.

“You’re very brave,” the woman says.

Lavender doesn’t know how to respond to that so she smiles, blankly. Parvati comes down ten minutes later and rubs the back of Lavender’s neck soothingly. Lavender relaxes into her touch. Sometimes it seems like Parvati reads her intuitively, like centaurs and the night sky.

"Did something happen while I was in the storage room?"

"People are still a bit weird about my...condition," she says in a low voice. Two wizards chat over camomile tea in black mugs just a few feet away.

“I know.” Parvati presses a kiss to her forehead, and Lavender can still feel it when Parvati goes out to fetch more milk and the gentlemen come to pay.

"These are delicious," the man says gesturing at his empty plate.

"Oh thank you,” Lavender responds. “Parvati’s idea. She makes the vada pav every morning." He orders two to go.

"How long have you been together?" the taller of the two men asks.

"Sorry about that, my husband is very nosy," the other cuts in.

"We're not. Together that is." Lavender says quickly. To recover the moment, she adds, "How long have you two been together?"

"Nineteen years, is it?" the first man says, turning to his husband for confirmation. His husband nods.

Nineteen years - that means around the First Wizarding War. What a thing to live through twice. Once had been enough for Lavender.

"That's a long time," Lavender says. She looks at the way they lean into each other, comfortably, casually.

"Goes by in flash," the second one says with a smile. "I'm Eamon. He's Gordon." He pays and hands Parvati a silver business card advertising his new pottery shop down the way, close to Knockturn.

"We'll be back for more I’m sure. Please come visit. Good to know the other shop owners around," the tall one—Gordon—says.

"And good luck!" Eamon adds with a wink. Lavender feels her face grow hot but doesn't manage to say anything more before they leave with big friendly waves through the window.

Not all reminders of the War are as good. One day, she gets an order by Owl for a D. Malfoy. Two pounds each of Assam black, silver needle white tea, and floral green tea, jasmine preferred.

She laughs herself nearly sick at the idea of fulfilling the request, bursting with rage. She feels slightly out of control. Before, anger had been an easily disregarded and oft-put away feeling and now her whole body burns with it. Draco Malfoy had been mixed up in all that shit, even if he'd been miserable about it. What gives him the right?

In the end, they need the money. So she asks Parvati to pack and send it out. She lies down upstairs in their narrow room with a cold compress over her eyes. She doesn't mean to fall asleep but Parvati wakes her up for dinner with a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Her mother sends food. Her father drops by with it every time he is in Diagon Alley, about once a week.

On one visit, Parvati is out running errands for her parents.

“I’m looking for the owner of this fine shop,” Dad says, like always.

He looks over the glass shelving, and the delicate teapots and the patterned tins behind her. There is a seating area made of cozy armchairs and sleek white tables, just big enough to work on.

“I am she,” Lavender responds, like always, giving her father a kiss on the cheek. His fear has mostly lapsed into worry, she thinks. She can’t tell anymore for certain. Her senses are starting to fade.

He cracks a smile just for her. They chat a little bit about the overhead, about the leftover repairs for her flat, about how contractors are booked for the next two years in most cases.

“And how is Parvati?” There’s definitely a tone there. She wonders what it is.

“She’s been a really big help with the shop. I can’t thank her enough,” Lavender says.

“I see your payroll, you know. But that’s good,” Dad says. “That’s good. She’s a good friend, your Parvati.”

The silence stretches a moment before he says, “Aarti told Mum she lives with you above the shop.”

Aarti is Parvati’s mum. She hadn’t counted on that. But Dad's smile is soft and open.

“She does live with me, yeah. It just made sense,” Lavender says slowly. The flat is too small for a second bed. He knows this. Parvati joked you could fry an egg from the loo.

“Well, you deserve to be happy. No matter what that looks like.” There was that meaning again, same as before, but this time Lavender understands.

She doesn’t want to have this conversation without Parvati. Lavender knows by now the depth of how she feels. She doesn’t think it’s one-sided, but acknowledging outright the subtle flirtation and the lingering touches might mean changing the way they are. Lavender likes the way they are. They could continue on like this on the edge of plausible deniability. Lavender has even thought that perhaps she was misreading friendliness and closeness on Parvati’s part because she was lonely and hurt. It’s been months.

But it seems even their parents have noticed something is going on and it won't be long until the inquiries become more pointed.

So she waits for Parvati to return.

Her first kiss had been Parvati. Third year. Lavender was nervous about the prospect of kissing anyone and they had practiced behind drawn curtains in Lavender's four-poster. That feeling was a trickle compared to the flood of how Lavender feels now.

Once Parvati returns, Lavender lets her talk over Mum's vegetable stew about the shops and how specific her parents were about every single thing on their list. Lavender watches her and watches her. From the sparkling pink nails that she insisted they both match on, to the beige cable knit cardigan wrapped around her that Lavender thinks might be hers, the sharpness of her wingtip, the proud line of her nose.

“My father came by today,” Lavender says, after the conversation hits a lull. “I guess our parents have been chatting?”

Parvati shrugs, a tiny thing. “I figured.”

“Why did you come live with me, Parvati?"

"You're my best friend in the whole world, Lavender. I would do anything for you."

Lavender might be mistaken, but they are close, _very_ close and the space between them crackles with something like magic. Parvati tucks a braid behind Lavender’s ear. She closes her eyes against the sensation of Parvati's hand brushing her face.

"I don't think I..." Lavender begins and trails off. If Lavender has learned anything, it’s that even as she’s vulnerable, she can be resilient. She has always been brave and now it’s time to be honest. She opens her eyes, scans Parvati's face for any hint of reproach. "I think my family knows that I don't just want to be your friend."

"Oh." A single syllable and she can tell Parvati is taken aback. Her mind is racing to how she can turn it into some sort of joke.

"Good." Parvati manages. "That's good. That everyone knows. My sister knows too."

"Knows what?"

"That I want..." Parvati trails off and this time the way she looks at Lavender's mouth is obvious. Hungry.

This time when Parvati kisses her it's not shy at all. Lavender melts into Parvati’s body, sighing into Parvati's mouth. It's almost overwhelming, this culmination of everything they had been to each other. She wants to catalogue exactly how it feels to have Parvati pressing into her, tugging her down onto the bed, kneeling between her legs, devouring her mouth. This feels like a beginning and a first. A certainty and a choice, not an ending.

“I want you too.”

Parvati does not avoid the scars when starts undressing Lavender. Parvati traces a finger down each one, kisses its beginning and the end. Even the ones that healed raised and bumpy.

"You don't have to," Lavender says. She means: _It’s alright if you only love the parts of me that are still pretty._

"I want to," Parvati says. "Let me." She kisses the unblemished skin, just the same, with Lavender's hand in her hair. Lavender is panting, her mouth open when Parvati finds her way back to it with a gentle kiss. Reverent.

Lavender tries to translate what she knows to ways she can touch Parvati and make her as breathless as she feels. Parvati is beautiful. The curve of her neck is as sweet as she imagined. Her mouth is wet, hot and perfect. Her skin tastes like sea salt, rosewater and tea leaves. Lavender is nervous about where her hands should be but the sigh that Parvati lets out when she pinches her nipple is what makes her more bold, if only to see if she can hear that sound again.

There's a small streak of possessiveness in Lavender too: _she is mine, all mine._

"Can I?" Lavender asks, her hand on the waistband of Parvati's shorts, against the generous curve of her belly. Parvati's gaze is heavy-lidded when she steps away, pulls off the denim herself, then her shirt. Her smile is the single hottest thing Lavender has ever seen. She is smiling back when Parvati drops back into her lap.

"Please," Parvati breathes out. “Please.”

The next day is Sunday. They leave the 'shop closed' sign up for the first time since opening months ago. They spend the day in bed so Lavender can learn exactly how it looks when Parvati gives herself over to pleasure and comes again and again. Lavender is giddy from the flush of success, of teaching Parvati to do the same, exactly the way she likes it, of how she might never be able to look at Parvati's fingers or mouth again without blushing.

"Have you done this before?" Lavender gestures over their tangled bodies. She's never even stopped to contemplate the meaning of all this, still dizzy drunk on newness. They did have some secrets from each other. Parvati shrugs, stands up and stretches. Lavender follows suit.

"Kind of. But not like this. Never like this."

It feels like a confession of that magnitude requires equal disclosure, and so Lavender says, "I don't think I've ever liked anyone the way I like you."

"I'm happy you're here with me," Parvati says, fiercely—the nearest they've come in these months to alluding that it was a close thing, Lavender being alive.

"I'm happy I get to have this," Lavender replies.

Then, with some cheekiness, Parvati says, "Terrible of you to seduce your employee."

"You want to make it out like I was the one seducing you?" Lavender gives her a fake affronted look and a tiny shove like they were back in school. Except Parvati hooks her foot around her as she slips so they both go down onto the couch, giggling.

Parvati's hair is fanned beneath her, and she's wearing nothing but a yellow sundress after their shower together had gone awry. It turns out that the shower stall is much too small for two people to do anything interesting, especially if one was trying to avoid getting her hair wet. That is going top of Lavender's list for the next flat expansion.

Lavender draws one strap of the sundress down and off Parvati's shoulder.

"I am starving," Parvati declares some time in the early evening. Lavender has lost all track of time, and forgotten there was a world outside their flat. Parvati gets up and throws on a silk robe that barely skims the top of her thighs.

"Tea?" Lavender says, although she thinks they should eat properly.

Parvati snorts, an indelicate thing. "I'm ordering food by Owl. Wear a robe."

"Why should I?" Lavender says. She drapes herself over the bed, arranging her limbs in a way that makes Parvati swallow hard.

"You're insatiable," Parvati says, fondly, as if Parvati likes uncovering this new fact about her.

"Just making up for lost time," Lavender says. But when Parvati comes back to bed after putting in the order, she just holds her, face buried in her hair. Lavender has everything she needs.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello?  
> [Tumblr](https://skeptiquewrites.tumblr.com/)


End file.
